24.03.2016
Anytime is the Right Time to Begin the Service that is Perfect Freedom – Archbishop Tells Clergy at Chrism Eucharist
The annual Chrism Eucharist took place in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, this morning, Maundy Thursday. The service, which included the consecration of oils used in ministry, saw the clergy and lay ministers of Dublin and Glendalough renew their commitment to ministry. During the celebration of the service, Archbishop Michael Jackson washed the feet of some clergy and lay people and in turn had his own feet washed.
In his sermon the Archbishop focused on the idea of ‘service’ and the importance of acceptance and obedience in embracing the service of others. Taking the line: ‘whose service is perfect freedom’, the Archbishop said the greatest freedom given to those who minister is to accept and embrace the patterning of their lives on the life of Jesus Christ.
He observed that on Ash Wednesday Christians worldwide were marking and being marked with the sign of the cross on their foreheads. On Maundy Thursday Christians worldwide were washing and being washed with water on their feet.
“Both of these are a commissioning. The first is a commissioning to belonging and obedience; and the second is a commissioning to service and obedience. Obedience is the common thread. As those who minister, we need the reciprocal and the relational acceptance of the ministry of God, of ourselves and of others if we are regularly to address the temptation that besets us to revert to self–sufficiency as a way of discipleship. Any time is the right time to begin the service that is perfect freedom – so long as we accept and embrace the service of others rather than stamping our heel when we should be slipping off our sandals,” he stated.
[The full text of the sermon is below]
Photo caption: Archbishop Michael Jackson washes the feet of a member of the congregation during the Chrism Eucharist Service.
Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Maundy Thursday March 24th 2016
Sermon preached by the Archbishop of Dublin
Readings: St John 13.1–17; 31b–35
St John 13.6: Peter said to Jesus, You will never wash my feet. Jesus answered, Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.
INDEPENDENCE AND DEFIANCE
Self–reliance and self–sufficiency are quite different things. It is essential that those of us who are involved in ministry know and retain the difference between them as something fundamental in self–understanding. The former relates to the capacity for self–motivation, as we might all probably tend to agree, but it also relates to the capacity for self–care. At the heart of our dilemma of self–sufficiency may be our idealized interpretation of that great verse from Holy Scripture: The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. (St Mark 10.45) If we, as what many people see and observe and analyse as professional Christians, over–apply this sentiment to ourselves as an ideal which resonates with that other great idealism: it is more blessed to give than to receive, we neglect another sentiment that comes through with childlike innocence from a hymn often sung: Brother, sister, let me serve you …let me be your servant too. Not to be aware of this gift from others and this need in ourselves is in itself the absence of prayer of, and acceptance by, others as an essential component of who we are and who God is making and shaping us to be. If we are honest, it is actually rather frightening.
INDEPENDENCE AND ACCEPTANCE
Acceptance of the personality, of the humanity of others connects us with them without depriving us of freedom. We, and they, remain free to be and to do. We are changed, however, in the interchange of acceptance and are made ever more free to be receptive and responsive. We cease to see ourselves alone as ‘the thing that matters’ as the picture deepens and the story widens and as others become part of the bigger narrative to which we belong, but we had never probably thought of it like that before. Acceptance requires humbleness and many of us take the whole of our life to accept humbleness as anything other than weakness. Throughout the Gospels, in their various forms, we see Peter and others among the disciples grappling with it, grasping it, dropping it and being offered it back as a gift again and again. Such acceptance is also the beginning of prayer and silence, for ourselves and for others. Again this is rather frightening for a group of ecclesiastical activists such as ourselves who so often seek out more and more ‘things to do’ in order to deflect the interchange of acceptance on any terms other than our own.
INTERDEPENDENCE AND OBEDIENCE
A phrase like: whose service is perfect freedom well directs us to another pathway. The greatest freedom given to us is to accept and to embrace the patterning of our life on the life of Jesus Christ. And part of that freedom is a freedom given us by God the Word to interpret and to apply Holy Scripture with imagination and obedience combined. If we take the rhythm of this Church’s Year, we have travelled quite quickly from Bethlehem to the Jordan, to the Wilderness and now to Jerusalem. But, once again, the very way in which I have expressed this is part of our problem. The next place is the better place than the last place and we quickly forget the last place we have been as we arrive in the next place. The Wilderness, as three of the Four Gospels tell us, is a place and a life where Jesus sorts through with and for us what we refer to as The Temptations. You will have preached on them and you will have your own ideas about them and their importance. They are surprisingly modern and contemporary and, again, this is rather frightening.
Taken together, and now looking back on them through the lens of Lent, The Temptations seem to me to point to the following truth: relationship is the experience that feeds instinct. Jesus, in each of his classic replies to The Devil, articulates his relationship with God and therefore, if we read this with Trinitarian eyes, his relationship to his understanding of himself – otherwise there would have been no point whatsoever in our having been in that other place Bethlehem. St John makes no more real reference to The Wilderness than he does to The Narrative of Institution or indeed The Little Town of Bethlehem. He takes it as woven in to the life of freedom, proclamation, love and redemption in and to the world. This is extremely helpful to us as being the other side of the coin of discipleship and of salvation and of witness and of obedience. It is something beyond joining the dots in the Biblical stories themselves. We are tested and tempted at all times and we can and do respond through interdependence and obedience. Obedience is the deepening of prayer. This is less frightening by far.
MINISTERIAL APPLICATION: ABOVE ALL, OBEDIENCE
Ash Wednesday saw Christians worldwide marking and marked with the sign of the cross on the forehead. Maundy Thursday sees Christians worldwide washing and washed with water on their feet. Both of these are a commissioning. The first is a commissioning to belonging and obedience; and the second is a commissioning to service and obedience. Obedience is the common thread. As those who minister, we need the reciprocal and the relational acceptance of the ministry of God, of ourselves and of others if we are regularly to address the temptation that besets us to revert to self–sufficiency as a way of discipleship. Any time is the right time to begin the service that is perfect freedom – so long as we accept and embrace the service of others rather than stamping our heel when we should be slipping off our sandals. We must banish fear and fright from ministry now.
St John 13.35: By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.